this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2026
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Modern engineer would built an aquaduct in kilometers, not miles 😅
Roman engineers most probably never heard about miles too.
millia pasuum, literally "1,000 paces," was a common unit of measure in the empire, and the basis of various modern miles. It was slightly shorter than the modern statute mile.
Interesting. Never realised that "mile" just means "thousand" (though it is kinda obvious in retrospect). And since the modern mile is 1760 yards, a kilometre is more of a mile than the actual mile.
Yeah, assuming that a yard is meant to approximate the stride of an adult human, who's the Goliath-sized motherfucker with the 5' 3" stride who took a thousand steps and called that a mile?
Edit: Okay, I checked.
An English mile is defined as 8 furlongs, 8 presumably being chosen because it divides by 2 and 4. What a cockamamie system of measurement.
Edit Again: Okay, I checked again.
This is all still very silly.
Far be it from me to defend the imperial system- I love and daily work in metric, but you realize nearly all ancient measurement systems are created around commonplace physical measures (body parts, strides, etc.) and simple multiples thereof to make their use easy, yeah?
We've got a lot of tools at our disposal now to both standardize and make working with a decimal system a lot more doable than before.
Unless they're american, then it'll be built in freedom units.
Will be built in cheeseburgers and carrying stolen oil.
Interesting (scribbles on clipboard)...and for how many football fields would it span, exactly? And weigh how many Ford F150s?
Hopefully it would have better logistics than Martian probe...
They can build it in kilometers all they want. Plenty of people will still measure it in miles.